how to make good money writing online

When you’re trying to build your freelance business in a sea of young writers and seasoned veterans, there’s a good chance it feels like you’re floundering. I know I did.

When I first started writing, I spent a ton of time worrying, procrastinating, and making excuses for why I couldn’t make a living doing what I loved. I wanted to break free from the corporate world and find success on my own terms.

For the first 6 months, I let my fear of being underqualified hold me back. As one of those young writers, I thought it might take me years to earn well as a freelancer. But I desperately wanted to find a way to speed up success.

I took courses, read freelance blogs like this one, and tried to learn everything I could about being a successful writer. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to get out of my own head and actually do the work.

Today, I make six figures, have a full client list, and teach other young writers how to overcome the same roadblocks I struggled with. As I’ve coached students in my Earn Big as a Young Writer course, I realized that my obstacles were very common.

Here are the top 4 obstacles young writers face (including me), and how to overcome them.

There are a lot of opinions out there about what freelance writers do. One of the big ones I’ve heard lately is that business writers are selling their soul and writing crap just to fill their bank accounts.

In other words, we’re not ‘real writers’ like novelists. Business writers are just paid copywriting hacks.

Writing for businesses also ruins our writing chops for any ‘meaningful’ personal writing we aspire to, such as poetry, essays, or novel writing.

I used to think like this. For many years, I was a reporter who thought advertising writers were part of the Dark Side of the Force.

By contrast, I was finding facts, revealing truths, enlightening readers with vital news and information they needed. Good stuff!

Then I happened into my first business writing gig, ghosting blog posts for a startup’s CEO, and decided to give it a try. Suddenly, I remembered how my first career as a songwriter went wrong, all because of a similar misconception I had about ‘selling out.’

You may have heard that if something seems to be too good to be true, it probably is.

Well, if someone tells you that freelance writing is an activity even a “broke, jobless dummy” can for-sure earn a middle-class income with, because “anyone can write” and “earn a safe, secure income” from home (all quotes from this pitchster’s website)…please be wary.

Here’s what I recently learned about the wild promises being made to online writers about the easy riches that supposedly await them…

That’s the response I usually got from family and friends when I talked about leaving my day job to become a full-time freelancer. So I put it off.

But after thee years as a smoking cessation counselor and researcher at Harvard Medical Center, I knew I needed to leave academia. The work was boring. The people were toxic. The egos were huge. And it never seemed like any of my patients ever quit smoking.

Ever wonder if you can make it as a full-time freelancer, find your niche, and make good money?

I did. So I started freelancing on the side. Within a year I took the leap and quit my day job. I’ve been freelancing full time for seven months, and I can’t imagine going back to a J-O-B.

Trying to find your niche? Some writers seem to have that dialed in from day one. It took me a little longer to figure out where to find good-paying clients. But what I’ve been able to accomplish as an LGBTQ writer in a short amount of time is proof that you can be a successful freelance writer in just about any niche.

Here’s the basics about how I found my niche, along with 18 LGBTQ sites (+1 bonus) that pay writers $50 or more per article.

I had to boil it down to the best initiatives I finally came up with that help bloggers ramp up earnings quickly…while reliving how much time I wasted fumbling around making mistakes before figuring things out.

One day I submitted an article to a client, who let me know it would run as soon as his designer finished creating an accompanying image. That got me thinking: Couldn’t I provide comprehensive services, with an article and a custom image, for a higher rate? It would save the client time and money and increase my rate — benefiting both of us.

There was just one problem: I don’t know much about graphic design and have zero access to the industry-standard — but expensive — software programs Photoshop and InDesign.